Sunrise today, 2025 12 28 at 9:30, 9:31 as I saw it rise ...

This first pic where we have lived these past 36 years...



Then a view from the East side of the house to where today's action took place. 



My hands still cold from holding my mobile phone.
Just at this time of year, let's say from the beginning of December, through the darkest day around the 21 st December this year, and onwards to say the end of January, all the right criteria line up to give our living area a view of the SUN: shining its first rays of the new day over the horizon beyond our east facing garden, to the north of the red out-buildings of our next door neighbour, on our southern side, to the north the gazebo of one of our North Eastern neigbours, and beyond the red out-building, visible to the south, another neighbour, both he and his wife recently departed for other dwellings they possess, in the capital, before reaching another apparently abandoned summer cottage, set back to the north, for the sea and its sun, rising beyond for our enjoyment, particularly my enjoyment, retired these past 17 years.
In summer it's as if we live in another country: the sun at the same time of day so high in the sky already, and if it were to rise in the same place just above the sea we wouldn't see it for all the leaves on all the trees and bushes, between our garden and the one, two, three, four or five other gardens, I get to walk through, unseen by anyone of note, just at this time of year, lol
Then writing this blog until 9 55 sitting at my desk here in my study, also east-facing, when at 9 55 the sun reappears beyond the red out-building described above.
Precious days for me when you think of how I grew up, for the most part in a two-up and two-down terraced house on Tottington Road, terraced without, for the most part, gardens either front or back, side by side with other similar, but not identical, but add-ons to the original pre-WW I dwellings, our house for example possessing a larger kitchen than the next ones nearer the town centre, to our left, on exiting our front door to the road outside, along which the Bury-Tottington tram used to pass, 1/2 penny ride to the nearest stop for our primary school journey of 1944, and onwards. Through its kitchen window looking out on a block of three WCs: ours far right, then Mrs Dawson's, our next door neighbour's, in a similar house to ours in size, before far left Dolly and Dick Nuttall's (who had the Cake Shop in my childhood) wherein they sold all their freshly baked bread, and cakes, but which at the same time ensured the houses thereabout were riddled with cockroaches, renown for seeking accommododation wherever there was a plentiful supply of of wheat flower, lol.
Still lit by a single gas mantle in each room downstairs probably upstairs too, but too early perhaps for me to have recall, being only 1 1/2 years of age when we moved in, following our Dad joining up in 1941, when in a sense we had to vacate our almost new 3 bedroomed semi-detached house with gardens front and back housing an Anderson Air-raid shelter in the back garden where I was comforted by my mother for the first 18 months of life, before I was able to lay memories down in the same way as later on Totty Road, hahaha.
A tin bath hanging up on the outside wall upon opening the backdoor, being dragged in once a week and filled, i.e. maybe to a depth of 2 inches from the gas-fired Geyser standing in the corner of the kitchen above a stone sink. Before our Ma had a bathroom built many years later: its space taken off the back, boy's, bedroom complete with fireplace so it could be heated in wintertime.
Before moving out at Easter-time in 1959, into the house in Cornall Street, with a stand alone bathroom in its middle bedroom, with small garden in the front, and own gated-backyard to the rear, also housing an outside WC, beyond a scullery, therefore boasting 3 downstairs rooms and 3 first floor rooms, with our first stand alone telephone.
The picture below 236 Tottington Road looking more delapidated than when we resided there in the 1940's and 1950's..

This house originally taken on by our mother and her mother, while our dad volunteered to join the war as a Royal Marine..!  

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